Luther Vandross sings of the precious memories of his earthly father who has passed away. And he dreams of his father as he sings, dancing with my mother and me. Spin me around till I fell asleep. And up the stairs he would carry me. And I knew for sure I was loved. He yearns to dance forever with his father, hoping and praying that those moments would never end. You are blessed if you feel like you had or have a loving father in your home. My prayer is that 20 years from now, Many more people in our congregation will feel the blessing of a loving father as we learn to soar like eagles. Deep down, I bet that we all yearn for this feeling Luther describes. But it wasn't a reality for many of us. And it's not a reality for many children today. The first time I taught here at River Mountain Chapel in 2024, I talked about discovering our roots and briefly discussed my father and childhood. And you may be surprised as you listen to this song that I draw inspiration from it, even though my earthly father didn't dance with me as many times as I would have liked. And many of my memories aren't pleasant ones. I use this song as a metaphor for my relationship with God, my heavenly father. Today I want to take you through the journey I started to be a godly head of my home as I dance. I dance with my heavenly father, who's a good, good father. And please know that I have not arrived yet, and I'm continually working on it. We, we have accountability to be students of godly parenting, whether we are parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or future parents. And to put God first in our home, whether it feels full or empty. Pastor Tom talked about levels of accountability for those who know the truth. when he worked through acts, and I encourage you to continue to draw from his sermons. But what's the first dance step? When you step onto the dance floor to dance with our Heavenly Father for the first time or again, to do the Heavenly Father Bach step, You must take that first dance step with your left foot called realize and receive. You must come to the realization in your heart that God loves you and receive his love. Realize he loves you and receive his love. God's love letter to us, the Bible, is full of verses about his love for his children. Let me share a few. First John 1, 3, 1 says, see what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And so we are. We are children whom he loves. Zephaniah 3.17 said, the Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. John also says in 1 John 4.19, we love because he first loved us. We model love because we are loved. Jeremiah 31.3 captures this. The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you." His love, like Luther's desire, is everlasting. Do you realize that? Do you receive his love? Ephesians 2, 4, and 5, but God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. His love saves us. We can start to dance with that love. And if you don't know him, you may have heard a thousand stories of what he's like. But I've heard the tender whisper of love in the dead of night. And he tells me he's pleased and that I'm never alone because he's a good, good father. And I'm ready to dance with him. In my decade and a half of learning to dance with my heavenly father, I have learned that it is difficult to imagine, grasp, and embrace the idea of a heavenly father and his love for you when your earthly father does not represent godly characteristics. In my childhood, I desired to have a better relationship with my father, and this desire has shifted to have a better relationship with my heavenly father. I want to share the journey I'm on to dance with my heavenly father, who's a good, good father. I can be the earthly father I am called to be and encourage others as well. And I am convinced that my leadership in my home must be an outpouring of learning to follow God's leadership in my life. Realizing that we are loved by God and fully receiving it helps us move into the next dance step. Roots. What's in your roots? What visions did you see or do you see when you listen to Luther sing, Dance With My Father? A few years ago, our company had the privilege of developing training on the values of good citizenship for incarcerated individuals. Many teachers in this room should know about this. In cooperation with a clinical psychologist, we developed training on boundaries, anger management, and many other topics to equip prisoners with the tools to become good citizens and avoid being reincarcerated. The ACES questionnaire was one of the tools we were exposed to during this training development. ACES, adverse childhood experiences. can significantly impact a person's health and well-being throughout their life. They can disrupt brain development and affect the nervous and immune systems. ACEs also increase the risk of mental illness, chronic health problems, and substance abuse in adulthood. We also know they can hold us back from understanding, realizing and receiving his love, which is a stumbling block in learning to dance with our heavenly father. I thought you would shout right there. I will give you a minute to review this list used by mental health professionals. If your experience isn't as dreamy Luther's psalm, you may have experienced one or more aces. As you read them, keep a mental count of how many of these ten topics applied to you or your home before you turned 18. Let me repeat that. Keep a mental count of how many of these ten topics applied to you or or your home before you turned 18? Look at the list again. How many aces have your children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews experienced. In my sermon last summer, I revealed that I was the little boy named Richard who did not realize and receive the love of God. I couldn't imagine rooting myself in God's word because I experienced, along with my precious mom, nine of the 10 aces. Nine! This stemmed from my earthly father's refusal to get on the dance floor with the Heavenly Father. The fallout of my childhood continues for generations. In the direct lineage of my earthly father, I am the only one of five children in my family who is married to his first and only spouse. Only three of my earthly father's seven grandchildren have been raised in a two-parent home. Of six great-grandchildren, only one is being raised in a two-parent home. And apart from me and my family, only one of my siblings and none of my father's grandchildren or great-children follow the Lord wholeheartedly. And as many of you in here can relate to, I won't even start with the count of addictions, incarcerations, and other repercussions. I have worked hard for 15 years with the help of spiritual and Christian counsel to heal. And if you have even one of these, I strongly encourage you to seek spiritual and professional Christian counseling. Newlife.com, Pastor and I talk, can help you find someone to speak to and additional resources. In relationship, Mandy had zero. She and her sisters followed the Lord. Her sister followed the Lord, chose a godly man to marry. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Yeah. I knew she would appreciate that until I get in the car. And they remain married to their first spouse and all of our children follow the Lord. Our roots impact our ability to realize and receive God as our loving good good father. Mandy and her sister have a relatively good imitation of their Heavenly Father here on earth. But what about those of us like me who did not? I want to acknowledge that before we take our second dance step. I want to acknowledge that. If your roots weren't with a good earthly example of your Heavenly Father, you can root yourself in joy, knowing who you are in God. Let's look back at some of the key points from 2024. In June, we learned about three reminders for sustaining joyful living. What is more joyous than dance? To be ready to dance with our heavenly father, we must root ourselves in who we are in him. We are made to bring God glory. I encourage us to remember that the root of humanity is that God did not need to create us. He chose to create us for his own glory and joy. In that, we see our purpose. Next, we explored some strong men from the Bible that we could learn from. And we reflected on our roots, recounting God's faithfulness, recognizing when we are bearing good fruit or bad fruit, taking the focus off ourselves and putting it on God and our roots in Him. Deeply trusting that God can use any curse, any adverse child experience, and turn it into a covenant and purposeful life. I thought you'd shout again with me right there. you ready to move on to the next dance step? The Heavenly Father boxed out. Let's look at how to change curses by releasing them. The third step is release. With my earthly father, the Lord allowed me a tremendous timely release and I want to share the story with you The story begins on the Sunday I preached here last summer, a special member of RMC invited another special member to watch the sermon because this person was mourning the loss of her husband and was unable to attend that service. When she watched the service, the Lord began a special bond between this person and me. And I did receive permission to share this, but she asked me to keep the focus on giving God the glory and not use her name. And she's here today. Fast forward a few months to the church picnic. at Elder Rusty and Kathy's home. Midway through lunch, around the table on their porch, this special friend spoke with a pointed passion, loud enough for the table to hear, but almost certainly directly at me. She was undistracted by interruptions and spoke without context. She spoke as though on a mission from God to impart wisdom on me. She spoke of exactly the words she used during her last moments with her husband to forgive him and release him in peace. Methodically, she worked through the phrases she used that the Lord had given her. listened intently feeling like the Lord was speaking to me. Little did I know at that moment that eight days later I would be praying the very same words this special person shared with me over my father as I said goodbye to him and released him. only to see him in a casket another eight days later when I gave the eulogy at his funeral. The Lord prepared me to release and forgive him for not being the kind of father he should have been. God had been preparing me through the sermon prep last summer, and through this special person's loss and prophetic words, I want to share with you the prayer I prayed at the beginning of the eulogy of my dad's funeral last fall. Let us pause and pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. We know, Lord, that you created us in your image to bring yourself glory. You are in control of our lives in the seasons we walk through. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We can sustain our joy even in suffering because we know this world is not our home and we can't wait for heaven. We long to see the purposes you have for the seasons that we will go through. Give us this day our daily bread. In you, we can find the sustenance for our lives and our strength to get through the cold seasons. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Help us if we harbor any unforgiveness for seasons past. and help us to acknowledge the cold seasons for what they are and not give them power and use them to develop strength. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Keep us rooted deeply in you to sustain our joy. Avoid our past temptations in cold seasons and live as men, women, and children in a new season. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's look for a moment at release and forgiveness, whether for our fathers or ourselves, for not being the models we should have been. Release must first start with forgiveness. But what really is forgiveness? Tim Keller in his book, Forgive. Why should I and how can I? It defines forgiveness as a four part process that involves naming the trespass truthfully as wrong and punishable. Identifying with the wrongdoer as a fellow sinner. Releasing the wrongdoer from the liability by absorbing the debt oneself. Aiming for reconciliation rather than breaking off the relationship forever. I need to repeat that one. Aiming for reconciliation rather than breaking off the relationship forever. Forgiveness is a theme throughout the Bible that we should emulate because Jesus forgave us. Matthew 6, 14 says, Jesus says, for if you forgive other people, when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive you. Paul writes to the church in Colossae in Colossians 3.13, bear with each other and forgive one another if you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And forgiving we become like Christ. And I want to share just a few more key points about forgiveness and encourage you to use Tim Keller's book as a reference if you need to work through forgiveness for someone. Let these points sink in. We are told to forgive. There must be forgiveness for true justice. Forgiving is treating others as God treats us. It is a way for us to heal. It launches reconciliation. It helps us avoid justifying our actions. And it releases us from consuming. It releases us from the consuming nature of resentment. It also releases the person. And I could only imagine how different my father's funeral would have been for me if I had not released him. I thank the Lord in obedience of the two special members of RMC for helping me to truly release my father and forgive him. And I pray that I and we continue to extend that special Christ-like love to all of the folks attending the new members class today. By releasing people in ourselves through forgiveness, we can experience the love so undeniable and the peace so unexplainable from our good, good Father. And as I prepare to close with the last Heavenly Father Bach step, call for prayer and worship, I want to reinforce some key points. Realizing and receiving God's love and rooting yourself in who God created you to be prepares you to release others in yourself. Realizing and receiving God's love and rooting yourself in who God created you to be prepares you to release others and yourself. I thought y'all would shout again. Then we can officially say this. The buck stops here. Right here, we can no longer blame our inadequacies on the previous generation. It's time to realign ourselves. It's time to realign ourselves. I said it's time to realign ourselves. I thought y'all would shout. I better stop. As long as I'm good with Mandy. Realignment. Our fourth step is a process. And this dance step and this dance step in the sequence will need to be repeated quite often. For me, it has been a seven year process and as a result, it will be the focus of my next message here at RMC in June. Let me give you a few highlights to pray on. How did I get to the point where I realize and receive and be rooted release my dad for his wrongs to my family and be able to lead young men and women to Christ at a church sports camp. How is that? I spent many years realigning myself to learn to dance with my heavenly father. Early in my Christian walk, my heavenly father taught me these steps to learn to dance with him and the heavenly father box step. I didn't know him until my mid-thirties, but make no mistake, I did know how to dance. And I won't do that today. I didn't know what a good earthly father was like, to be honest. I just spent time with my heavenly father's word and with him to learn what a heavenly father was like. I sought out earthly models of men dancing with their Heavenly Father, and I went about learning how to be an earthly father. Let's look at some nuggets and things I want you to be praying on about and preparing for over the next few months. First, studying the model of our Heavenly Father by spending time in His Word, the Bible, And getting to know his characteristics gives us the model from which to pattern ourselves and realign to God's dance steps and rhythm. And I will give you some tangible examples of how that looks in my life and how time in a word has evolved in the Grant home. Studying the characteristics of God as we're doing in systematic theology, Getting to really know him and who he is helps us to follow him as he dances. So we will look at some of the characteristics that we can emulate God. Beyond studying God, a dance would not be a dance without time with your dance partner. We must spend time with him. We will look at the spiritual disciplines like prayer, and meditation. God also designed us for fellowship, another of the keys to our spiritual formation. We will look at finding an earthly model who is also dancing with the Heavenly Father and learning from great resources, including the biblical treasures God inspired in our own very, our George Jensen to write. He has a lot of these topics outlined perfectly that address many of these topics. Thank you, Brother George. Let's give Brother George a round. Continue realigning yourself to the Heavenly Father will prepare you to be an earthly model of the Heavenly Father. We are going to look at modeling the Heavenly Father box step to others, starting with your family. Men, your role as head of the home is critical. It's critical. Ladies, your role is critical too. And I know I have talked predominantly to the men, but your support is so important. I will not forget about you in June, your help in understanding his roots in yours, releasing and forgiving his past and yours, and realigning yourself with the points I will cover in June while you support him, will be instrumental in his realignment. I'm looking forward to digging into this realignment step with you in June. We covered a lot today about our dance steps. To learn to dance with our heavenly father and to lead our families. It's a lifelong journey for understanding what it means to be a man and putting God first in the home. Luther wanted to dance with his father again, but we have something, someone even better, a good, good father to dance with and model ourselves after. Thanks for listening to this message from River Mountain Church. If you'd like some more information, visit our website, rivermountainchurch.org.